The police today confirmed that the found man was a Norwegian yet many still wait answer for the Kamphuis case.
On 20 August, Arjen Kamphuis, a leading Dutch cybersecurity expert, checked out of his hotel in Bodø and has been missing since then.
Dutch security expert Arjen Kamphuis was on holiday in Norway, when he mysteriously has disappeared. He would fly back to Netherlands on 22. August, he never showed up at the gate. He had told friends that he would take the train to Trondheim from Bodø, 10 hours away.
He never boarded the train. An intensive search by Norwegian police, and two Dutch investigators failed to locate him ending with some question marks.
A kayak believed to belong to Kamphuis was pulled from the sea about 50km from Bodø the day after an amateur fisherman found some of his belongings including an ID card floating in the water.
But mobile phone records show that 10 days after the Dutchman was seen leaving his hotel, both his work and personal mobile phones were briefly switched on – with German SIM cards inserted – more than 1,700km from the small northern town, at Vikeså near Stavanger, according to the Guardian based.
Norwegian Police focus on three alternatives for the profiled cyber security expert , who advised Wikileaks, governments, corporations, journalists and activists on information security: a “voluntary disappearance” including a possible suicide; an accident; or foul play.
wikileak published several updates and comments on the investigation, describing Kamphuis’s disappearance as “strange” and highlighting the fact that his phone was activated a long way from where his belongings were found.
The site’s followers have suggested variously that Kamphuis, an outspoken campaigner for online privacy rights, was kidnapped or even murdered by the US, British or Russian secret services.
Norwegian Police have denied any connection between Kamphuis’s disappearance and the fact that Bodø houses a Norwegian military airbase, and that buried deep inside a nearby mountain is a major part of Norway’s secret cyber defence operations.
The Dutchman’s friends have accused Wikileaks of using his disappearance for its own benefit, and are upset that some media reports have unquestioningly repeated the organisation’s claim was an Assange “associate”.
Dutch media have reported that the Dutchman helped some Wikileaks members with advice on avoiding cybersnooping and government surveillance, the subject of a book he co-wrote with Silkie Carlo, but it is unclear how often or regularly he worked with Wikileaks, reported the Guardian.